elstaffe’s Reviews > The Dispossessed > Status Update

"No law, no limit, no penality, no punishment, no disapproval applied to any sexual practice of any kind, except the rape of a child or woman" (245) not men, though, apparently that's chill

Oh and here's that sexual assault everyone's been talking about

"'It is like this, to make a foolish little picture—you are throwing a rock at a tree, and if you are a Simultanist the rock has already hit the tree, and if you are a Sequentist it never can.'" (225) the latter does not follow based on what's been explained in this book. This is nonsense and logically lacking, put into the mouth of a character we're supposed to believe is a genius physicist

"Infinite repetition is an atemporal process. It must be compared, referred to some other cyclic or noncyclic process, to be seen as temporal." (223) this feels like the passages in Agatha Christie spy novels where she tries to talk about secret groups trying to topple governments and it becomes clear she's a writer and not an expert in the field.

"In a pen by himself the herd sire, ram or bull or stallion, heavy-necked, stood potent as a thundercloud, charged with generation." (206) simply swimming in generation. Balls swollen with generative potential. So masculine.

Man, the OCR in this edition is not great. Most of the time I can see what was meant, but in a sci-fi book where words are made up and concepts remade, things like "dom" instead of "dorm" and "eighty years old" instead of "eight years old" really do make quite a difference